The Newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting Company Corporate Engineering

OCTOBER 2020 • VOLUME 30 • ISSUE 10 • W.C. ALEXANDER, CPBE, AMD, DRB EDITOR

Microwave Links serviceable antennas that would work, so we About a year ago, in an effort to deal with a scheduled the work for mid-September. Our shortest batch of orphaned Part 101 microwave links in path, KLZ, would be first. Should be easy, right? several markets, we purchased new Cambium Existing paths, existing antenna mounts and all that... equipment. The big question Amanda will tell was whether we could use you more about this project our existing antennas with in her column, but… the Cambium radios. The Keith was in the answer was anything but middle of a move, and clear. Amanda has yet to acquire We were able to the ability to be in two obtain adaptors that places at once, so it fell to converted both Andrew and me to work the studio end Radio Waves antennas for while Amanda would go the Cambiums. We believed with the other crew out to that our Trango-branded 3- KLZ. But before starting, I and 4-foot antennas were wanted to see the radios on either Andrew or Andrew the backs of the antennas so knockoffs. At one point in I could be certain that the the late summer of 2019, I Yes, the “new” antenna for the KLZ 11 GHz link adaptors would work with checked and found that the says “Eventide” on it. No, it’s not an Eventide the used antennas. And it’s a adaptor would indeed fit the antenna, but Amanda had some cool Eventide good thing I did, because antennas we had on the roof stickers that came with the new delay units, so while the Commscope at our Denver facility. rather than leaving the radome bare… antenna worked fine on the Several months Andrew dish, we did not later, when we had the radios on hand, we sent Derek have the proper adaptor for the Radio Waves dish. Jackson up with Amanda to do the installation. The Back to the drawing board. adaptor fit just fine… but the waveguide from the The 3dB folks sourced the proper adaptor feedhorn would not fit the Cambium radios. And for the RW dish and got two of them overnighted to unfortunately, the feedhorn in the Trango-branded us – two because we would also need one for the dish antennas were integral and could not be swapped KLTT link the following week, assuming the KLZ out. So… we would have to get new antennas, ones link work went okay. that fit. What a pain! The next morning, we met on the loading And then along came COVID-19. dock at our studio building, and the adaptors arrived Everything was put on hold. It was only in July that before 8:00 AM. We put it on the 4-foot RW dish, we again started looking at this. Our friends at 3dB and the radio fit perfectly. So off Amanda went with Networks came out and did a site survey at the studio one crew and up I went to the roof with the other and the three transmitter sites where the older Trango crew. radios were in use. 3dB had some used but

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

tower. My working theory is that there is a current detector in that power supply/injector, and the RF was fooling the comparator into “thinking” the radio was drawing too much current, causing the supply to crowbar. Derek observed the power supply coming on and producing full voltage, then shutting down, then powering up, then shutting down, ad nauseam. The crowbar would clear when the voltage went to zero and the supply would come back on… until it crowbarred again. As soon as we would switch to the ND mode on the other tower, the power supply would stay on and the radio would reboot. So… we pulled out the Cambium supply/PoE injector and Derek hauled up an Omrin DIN-rail 48-volt supply and installed that, powering the radio directly. That worked. With RF on the tower, we had good throughput with no further issues. In the process of installing the KLZ and KLTT Cambium equipment, we had a couple of occasions when parts were needed at the top of a tower and it would be a long climb down and back up. It occurred to me that we might be able to deliver the needed parts with our drone, so I rigged a 12-foot piece of nylon strap and up it went. At KLZ, I rigged a slip-knot through a Ziplock bag with the parts One of the new Cambium PTP820S 11 GHz radios inside. That worked great. installed on the back of a pre-owned antenna on the KLZ west tower. It was a very, very long day, but by twilight that evening, we had the antennas changed out, the new radios in and radiating, and the path aligned. The link was passing data at the rate we expected, so we were about to call it a success. And then, as soon as the climber was off the west tower at KLZ, we switched back to the DA mode, and as soon as we did, the link died. As in dead. As in can’t even ping the radio on the tower. And no signal received at the other end. It didn’t take long to figure out that the 2 kW of 560 kHz RF in that west tower was somehow killing the radio. The question was, what could we do about it. We scheduled our friend and engineer- The tower worker reaches out and takes hold of climber Derek Jackson to go up the tower to look the cable clamp that Jordon flew up to him with things over. our drone. I was thinking that the 56-volt MOVs in the At KLTT, at the suggestion of my son-in- Ethernet surge suppressor installed in line with the law Jordon, who is a professional drone pilot, I network cable up on the tower were firing as a result rigged the strap with a couple of medium binder of the RF riding on top of the 48-volt DC PoE. That clips, attaching one to the drone’s landing gear and seemed like as good a guess as any, but Derek the other to the part that was needed up on the tower. quickly figured out that the issue was the Cambium Since he was standing there, I asked Jordon to fly the power supply/PoE injector. It was shutting down part up the tower, and he did. It was windier than it when we would put any amount of AM RF on that had been when I flew the parts up the KLZ tower, but 2

The Local Oscillator October 2020 he got it done, putting them right into the climber’s the end of the line? In both the KLZ and KLTT cases, hands. we simply had the climber go up a short distance to We’re going to have to do some the top of the tower to retrieve the items, but what experimenting to see what kind of payload weight would we do if the work were farther down a tower? our drone will safely carry. We also need to see how All questions to be answered through close we can get to the tower structure – can we get experimentation. close enough for the climber to reach out and grab

The New York Minutes By Brian Cunningham, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC – Western New York

Hello to all from Western New York! I truly felt sorry for Stan, and his former The Oxford English Dictionary defines employer, for I know what he accomplished over the passion as a strong and barely controllable emotion, years could not be replicated by anyone else. His enthusiasm or fondness former employer is still towards someone or searching for a suitable something that provides you replacement in a dwindling great joy or anger. pool of reliable and Through the years, competent applicants. I have met perhaps hundreds Even after 50 years of broadcast engineers and since I first started in the made friends with many of broadcast business, I still them, conversing either look forward to coming to through social media or work and solving problems, telephone from time to time. figuring out better ways of I recently reached out to one doing things, and learning such individual whom I had new techniques and met some 30 or so years ago technology changes. I am so at a Kentucky Broadcasters thankful that I have the Association award banquet in Louisville, Ky. opportunity to do daily what brings me joy and Stan and I hit it off instantly, and remained challenges, and I pray that I never lose that passion in contact at least monthly, until the pandemic hit in that has driven me for most of my life. mid-March. I called Stan recently to see how things Each year, the week after Labor Day, Nora were going for him and to catch up with how things and I pack up and head to Eastern Pennsylvania for a were going in his world. I was truly surprised to hear week of relaxation in Gettysburg. This year is the that he had quit broadcast engineering and was first time in 28 years that we have not made the trek working as a marketing consultant for a major to our favorite destination, largely due to the COVID- Fortune 500 company. When I asked what happened 19 situation. We knew that many of the restaurants with his engineering career, he stated that the group we loved to frequent were going to be closed, or open that owned the stations he worked for had purchased for take-out dining only, and closures or limited several more stations in an adjacent market, therefore occupancy of attractions we would likely just make increasing his workload considerably. this year’s trip un-exciting. As a result, this year’s Knowing his abilities, I was certain that he vacation was spent right here in Buffalo, where I was more than capable of handling the additional made substantial progress in projects around the workload, and after several minutes of hearing all house. that was wrong (in his mind) with his situation, it In years past, each time I took vacation time, occurred to me that he had simply lost his passion something failed in the WDCX-FM transmitter, and towards broadcast engineering. All of the things that this year was no exception! Checking the operating he found joy in doing were now pure drudgery to parameters daily via the AUI, on Thursday the 17th of him, and he felt no personal satisfaction in doing September, I noticed that the transmitter’s status had what he coveted most for so many years. changed from green to yellow, indicating a problem 3

The Local Oscillator October 2020 or component failure. After checking the controller When I arrived at the transmitter site, I readings, I discovered that the +12v (SBC) switching removed each diode from the coupler and checked supply had failed. As this did not affect transmitter the tab inside the coupler for proper connection to the output in any way, I ordered the replacement supply diode slug and found both to be within tolerance. I for delivery the next week. next checked the transmitter’s tuning and found that On Monday the 28th, I went to install the the loading control would not find a peak, indicating supply, and tried to bring up the auxiliary transmitter that there was some type of major impedance change to keep us on the air while the supply was switched in either the antenna or feedline. out, but that transmitter would not come up and make As we were approaching very high VSWR, I power. I saw nearly maxed-out plate voltage and no reduced output power to about 50% and decided to plate current, and no drive on the IPA. The exciter borrow an analyzer from my friend Bill Stachowiak looked fine, so I removed the BNC connection from to try and determine what was going on. the IPA to the input of the final and replaced it with a Bill and I returned the following evening direct connection from the exciter and hit plate on. and hooked his analyzer up to the feedline, but were The transmitter came to life with low output power, unable to get any type of meaningful indications due so I knew the final tube and circuitry were OK. to the high RF field from the other FMs located on A closer inspection of the IPA revealed that the tower; they were swamping the front-end of the both RF modules had failed. I had a spare module, so analyzer. I installed the one good module, put the aux on the The next morning, I contacted Patriot Tower air, and continued on with the replacement of the in Chili, NY to inspect the panel antenna and feedline switching supply in the Nautel NV40 transmitter. for any damage, and they reserved Tuesday the 29th When time permits, I’ll troubleshoot and repair the for the inspection. Early Monday morning on the failed IPA amplifier module in the auxiliary. 28th, Patriot e-mailed us with a cancellation for the Another transmitter issue that recently next day’s work and re-scheduled for the week of developed occurred at our sister FM station in October 5th. Until then, we will continue to operate Rochester, NY, WLGZ Legends 102.7. The at half power, which surprisingly, no difference in afternoon announcer phoned me on the afternoon of coverage area has been noted, especially to the west Friday the 18th and reported that the transmitter towards Buffalo, where we have a null to protect readings were “all over the place.” WTSS at 102.5 I’ll report on our findings in next We have experienced similar occurrences in month’s column. the past, which turned out to be associated with the That about wraps up another month here in directional coupler at the output of the harmonic the great northeast, and until we meet again here in filter. Thinking this was the same situation as in years the pages of The Local Oscillator, stay safe, social past, I didn’t make the trip over to Rochester to distance, and happy engineering! rectify the problem until Tuesday the 22nd.

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

The Motown Update by Mike Kernen Chief Engineer, CBC–Detroit

Get on the Ground! It is easy to think that adequate grounding is that cannot be traced and plenty of low-grade gear. achieved when some thing or system is installed and Why anyone would use a $10 network switch in a take for granted that it’s either done correctly or that business is beyond me. I love that the few cables that it’s still doing its job as intended. In are labeled say things like telco 21… my former life as an FM-only CE, I but only on one end. What...?? really didn’t pay them too much One of my favorite things is attention. Of course, I’d install SNMP. Now that the ARCPlus grounding straps and cables, but Touch supports it through an optional beyond that, grounds were just there. license (AutoPilot SMNP is free), you Joining Crawford, I now have three can use it to connect many things to AM DAs to look after, so I’ve begun your remote control system that to see the ground system as you’d never have connected in the something that regularly needs past. Gates Air, Nautel, Inovonics, inspection, evaluation, and repair. Eaton (UPS systems), WorldCast, and I’ve identified and fixed several Wheatstone are just a handful of grounding issues this summer: examples of companies that allow On our 50 kW 10-tower interaction with their products via array, tower #2 had a strap ripped in two but partially SNMP. buried. As Cris Alexander says, “…(it’s) very I have recently started using SNMP to add important at those power levels, where a few tenths metering and control to our Nautel NX and NV of an ohm can result in a lot of lost watts and warm transmitters. I love that it takes away the non- earthworms.” Silver soldering an extension piece linearity of analog metering samples. What also took about an hour and some digging but guarantees makes it great is that virtually any data point in the that the tower will work as intended. transmitter can be looked at and monitored by On our two-tower 1 kW DA, a problem ARCPlus, which can then send alerts or take actions ground at the ¼ wavelength point of the shared-use for you. tower had been causing problems for years and had Where the wired remote control is limited in us operating under an STA for months. I could write scope, SNMP can give you hundreds of datapoints to an entire article on just this problem, which required pick from and virtually wire to your system. Keep in several climbs to definitively find and solve. Also at mind that Nautel requires you to use two MIBs, one this site I found torn ground straps, several bad master and one specific to the agent device. In some connections at grounding rods, and even a ground cases, you’ll need to setup a user account for the braid that was only just taped to an N connector. SNMP manager on the agent device when SNMP v3 A loose ground can also be “hot.” RF connections are desired. energy can be significant on an open ground Industry friend and tech guru Tony Peterle conductor, so use caution working with a broken explains SNMP in an excellent article: ground or if you lift one during a repair. I use https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gear/the- welding gloves around energized towers. snmp-protocol-and-its-integration-as-a-broadcast- monitoring-tool, published in Radio World. Net “work” Unfortunately, the network in Detroit has Two-Tower DA been an evolution built with poor attention to detail. Our 1340 kHz station uses a two-tower DA No documentation, no maps, no structured cabling ‒ for its daytime pattern using a three-legged self- it’s bush-league at its best. Each problem is face- supporting tower of about 410 feet in height as the palm after face-palm and workarounds are a-plenty. southern radiator and reference tower. This tower is I’ve found loops, uplinks that just don’t work, cables also used by Entercom for its superpower class B FM 5

The Local Oscillator October 2020

(190 kW ERP!) WOMC with its attendant aux and that would detect the fault and switch us to ND-2 lighting components, dictating careful grounding and when it would act up. isolation. The tower has been notorious for shifting I took apart every ground I could reach. base impedance, and since February has not operated Some were nasty. One was a braid just taped to an N reliably and mostly not at all, necessitating an STA connector; others were loose, and of the straps was for us to run ND from the northern tower only. partially torn. We re-did the feed line from the ATU There’s been no shortage of effort applied to finding the problem, but remember that CBC-Detroit had no CE for a long period of time. Having been hired after the issue’s appearance and having no history with this tower, I struggled to learn how the tower was designed to work and where to apply resources to find the problem. I’d been told that crews had been on the tower and found nothing wrong. A contract engineering firm flew the tower with a drone and found nothing. I hired a consultant ‒ an old salt who has a lifetime of AM DA experience ‒ and he and I watched as the reactance at the ATU output flipped from good to bad, from inductive to capacitive with no indication why. Other inspections I made turned up major The leg of the WOMC tower where the FM issues in the phasor, intermittents, corrosion, tuning transmission line was bonded to the tower at the controls that were frozen or nearly impossible to 1/4-wave point. This badly-corroded connection cost us months of operation at reduced power. and even dug up the strap from the ATU over to the tower. We covered the leaky roof of the old lighting shack with a tarp and took OIB measurements with the lighting conductors disconnected. None of this helped. Finally, a third crew, this time going all the way past the FM, were on their way down after reporting on the radio that everything was looking “great.” Suddenly, they fanned out on the horizontals and moved over to the FM transmission line’s grounding point at the ¼-wave point. Poking at the tape, he noticed an arc and burnt his finger slightly. Opening it up revealed a mass of rust and a worm clamp that was totally fried. An example of the kinds of things I found at the As many of you know, on an unskirted FM site. tower used for AM, it is absolutely mandatory that move, contactors with bad finger stock and shorting every transmission line be insulated from the portion bars. The strangest was that the rollers on a few of below the ¼-wave point and then “grounded” to the the ribbon coils would not slide on their shafts easily tower at the ¼-wave point. This ensures that the and had been forced, causing them to spread open impedance seen at the tower base is an open circuit in and making them intermittent. These being in series parallel with the self-impedance of the insulated with our affected tower, I imagined fixing this would tower. A poor ground, or in our case an open one, straighten things out. No matter if it did or it didn’t, changed the towers characteristics drastically, they had to be fixed. Amazingly, it seemed to work, negating its ability to be anything more than a and the tower functioned, but after about three days it support structure for the FM. was failing again. I even wrote a macro in ARCPlus I’m thrilled to say that finally works and is stable once again.

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

News from the South by Stephen Poole, CBRE, AMD Chief Engineer, CBC–Alabama

As usual, I’ll start with a Weather Whine™, Birmingham. 30 miles away, in a dip in their but I can make it brief. Neither Sally nor Beta really directional pattern, I was picking them up well did much in Birmingham and northward. Best I could enough to get clean RDS on the Ford’s radio. Maybe tell, aside from brief outages, it was just weird skip or none of our stations went off air atmospherics. I’m just saying ... for any length of time. The (heh). generator at the 120 Summit studios ran for a bit, but neither Data Links Red Mountain (WDJC-FM) nor We’re in the process of Cullman (WXJC-FM) had much replacing some of our older trouble. Thank the Lord! Trango links with Cambium After the storms passed units. So far, we’ve been pretty through, the weather here impressed with them. Todd became quite pleasant, with supervised the installation of the highs in the upper 70s and low new Cambium link between the 80s. While it has begun warming 120 Summit studios and the back up as I write this, it’s still WDJC-FM site on Red not as bad it was over the heart of Mountain; we were down for summer. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Keith Peterson has been about 45 minutes and then it came right back up. complaining repeatedly about how hot it has been in Todd is in the process of installing the license to Denver, and posts on Facebook have reported hot increase the throughput as you read this. weather elsewhere. 1260 (WYDE) has given us a bit of trouble, Speaking of Facebook: Paul B. Walker, Jr, probably due to the storms. The link on the tower runs a Facebook group called I Take Pictures of failed and stopped working. We replaced it and it Transmitter Sites. Paul is also a talented guy with a worked fine ... until we turned the transmitter back great air voice and enjoys scanning the dial to see on. Obviously, we’d rather broadcast something, so what he can pick up (that old “DX-ing” thing). He we decided to investigate. In the interim, we fed 1260 sent me an email a few weeks ago about receiving and WXJC’s translator (which is mounted on WXJC-FM, 101.1, in Laramie, Wyoming(!!!). He WYDE’s tower) from WDJC-FM’s HD3 and HD2, included a sound clip and yep, it was us. respectively. I know we’ve had some meteor showers in Todd (re)droned the tower and discovered recent weeks, but still. The other day I was working that the grounding lug on the radio had been left at 101.1 in Cullman, then drove back toward disconnected. We had the tower crew come back and Birmingham. Like you folks, I know what all of my attach it; this improved things ‒ we were able to get stations should sound like in each location that I in over the network, but not reliably. Audio delivery frequent. 92.5 in Pumpkin Center, AL, is a little Class still suffered from severe glitches and dropouts, so I A that has to fight the hilly terrain, but I still decided to go on a grounding and shielding spree. normally receive it once I’m about 10 miles south of Working on a Saturday, with no pressure from Cullman. I couldn’t hear it in the usual spots and sent elsewhere, I constructed a frame from PVC that I’d Todd and Jack a text. I was almost ready to dispatch purchased at Lowes (see Figure 1). Jack to the transmitter site when it suddenly came in If you’ve never used this, you’ve missed a ‒ scratchy, noisy, but definitely there. treat. These are PVC “boards,” located in the lumber Also like you folks, I keep a listen on the department. Home Depot carries them as well. The competition for comparison. Some stations that I ones at our Lowes have a (very fakey-looking) grain could normally receive at my home near Warrior, finish on one side; the other is smooth. It’s paintable, AL, were buried in white noise ‒ almost like they but I decided to leave it white. It’s reasonably strong, were being jammed. But one that punched through is very easy to work with and cuts quickly with almost a 100W translator that’s paired with an AM in any decent saw. I used wood screws to hold it 7

The Local Oscillator October 2020

Internet:

 Just having a port-blocking firewall isn’t enough, and  Changing port numbers may keep away the bored kids, but it won’t stop serious hacking attempts.

Figure 1 - Not the best picture I've ever taken, but you get the idea. together, countersunk so that I could fill the holes with white painter’s caulk. I simply let the drill push them into the PVC by about 1/4” or so. Figure 2 - At total of 200,000 failed attempts on The screen is aluminum mesh, attached to these two servers! the station’s master ground lug. Mounting the equipment onto the screens probably provides a good Fail2Ban watches the system logs for ground, but I attached separate ground wires anyway. repeated attempts from the same IP address. This is Figure 1 shows the work in progress. For now, we’re usually a sign that someone is trying to “brute force” on one of Cambium’s “laptop” type injectors, and the their way into our servers by guessing passwords. data link is up and running nicely. The old wall- The professional Bad Guys use software specifically mounted Cambium power injector apparently designed to automate this; it will try the most sacrificed itself during one of the storms. Everything commonly-used passwords, and/or exploit and search is inside that shielded cage, and I’ve double- for other vulnerabilities. By only giving them three grounded the shields on the data lines running up the tries, we have dramatically cut down on these attacks. tower. I snipped the long IP address list in Figure 3, but I had checked a bunch of them with a command- Fail2Ban ‒ Update line “whois” search. Most are in China; other attacks I mentioned this last time, but I forgot to were coming from Eastern Europe, Brazil, and the mention the reason why I installed this on our public Middle East. These attacks are worse than annoying. servers. Amanda Hopp contacted me a while back; Someone, somewhere, is serious about taking over she had noticed that a bunch of failed login attempts our servers. If you maintain a server where you’re at, had been made on one of our corporate FTP servers. you’d better check your logs regularly. If you’re not Fortunately, we use the very secure VS-FTP sure where your log files are, Google it for that software, but a quick check of some of our other specific server ‒ for example, “where is the VNC log servers showed that we were experiencing general file?” attacks across the board. Whenever possible, we change the default port numbers; for example, we Linux: The hosts.allow File never use port 22 for Secure Shell (SSH), or 5900 for If you can, you should also limit the IP VNC. But apparently, the hackers are wise to that addresses that are allowed to connect. This isn’t now. always possible; a public FTP server (our company Have a look at Figure 2. I’ve circled some runs more than one) is a good example. Fail2Ban is numbers that should concern anyone who maintains a better for that, because users will come and go, and server, whether you work for us or for some other there’s no way to be sure what their IP address will company. Over 125,000 attempts to hack into our be from one connection to the next. mail server! This is so important, I’m going to put it You can also do this with a good firewall in bold print. If you expose a server to the public (we like ClearOS; we use PFSense as well). Look for (or Google, or post a request in that firewall’s online 8

The Local Oscillator October 2020

support forums) a way to limit the IP addresses that continues to be a problem. We’re hammered with it, are permitted to access a given service. your ISP sees a flood of it, everyone is trying to deal As our public-facing servers all run some with it. Unfortunately, this puts pressure on flavor of Linux or BSD, there’s another, quicker way legitimate email providers to adopt the Latest And to do it. For limited access, such as Secure Shell Greatest Things, often with no warning. Case in point (“SSH”), I use the file “/etc/hosts.allow” to specify this time: ensuring that your mail server uses Sender only a small group of authorized IP addresses for that Policy Framework and DomainKey Identified Mail service. Anyone else who attempts to connect will get (“SPF” and “DKIM” respectively). a “connection refused” error. The basic format of In fairness, these aren’t actually new. I’ve each line in the file goes something like, “[service known about these for a while and had planned to set name] : [ip or host name] : [action].” Using SSH as it up for our mail server when we had time. Time ran an example: out, though, when some email providers decided to sshd : localhost : allow start blocking email that didn’t have these records. I sshd : 192.168.1 : allow won’t bore you with the extremely geeky details. It sshd : [123.234.123.234] : allow took a good bit of work to get this straightened out, sshd : [12.12.13.14] : allow mostly because of bad information and advice. sshd : ALL : deny Basically, you have to add these as text (“TXT”) The first line permits the machine to connect records to your Domain Name System (“DNS”) to itself. Sounds silly, but you always include this entries. (And what we really need is a few more (especially under POSIX operating systems!). The acronyms.) second line allows anyone on the local network to Our domain registry is with GoDaddy. They connect to SSH (change the IP range to match your have a nice Website, but their support isn’t the best. setup). You can easily trim this to only a few If you call, you will be on hold for quite a while, after machines, but keep in mind that if you’re using which, you will get someone who (at best) speaks DHCP, addresses could change. The third and fourth broken English. Better results can usually be had with lines allow only these specified addresses from the their Chat system: you log in, give your credentials, outside world to connect. Finally, the last line says, then wait for a support tech to come on and swap text “deny access to everything else.” Figure 3 shows the with you. The problem in this case was, I was getting result after a couple of days with the hosts.allow file conflicting information. One tech flatly dismissed me set up: nothing currently banned. with, “We don’t support DKIM.” The Geeks With Neckbeards warn that this Actually, their DNS servers can handle SPF isn’t foolproof (what is?). IP addresses can be and DKIM records just fine. And I’ve dumped on spoofed ‒ simply put, the attacker can pretend to be their support, but I do appreciate one tidbit of someone else. But it’s definitely another tool that information that was passed on to me during one should be used. Just be careful not to lock yourself particular chat: GoDaddy will add the primary out; you’ll have to physically log into the machine domain name to whatever you put in the “host” box with a monitor and keyboard to fix it ... of a DNS record. You don’t enter “mail.crawfordbroadcasting.com,” you just enter “mail.” GoDaddy adds the rest for you. So, with an SPF record, the host name is just going to be the selector. You don’t add “domain.com” (or whatever) to that. Just enter the selector. If that means nothing to you, that’s fine. I’m just glad that we figured it out. I had to manually type Figure 3 - Only permitting specified IP addresses (well, OK, cut and paste) the needed, geeky-looking eliminated the attacks. strings into these TXT records. When it started working, I did what Todd, Jack and I usually do after

a wrestling match like this: I backed away slowly and Mail Server Happiness quietly and let it hum! ... and speaking of the mail server: SPAM Until next time, keep praying for this nation!

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

The Chicago Chronicles by Rick Sewell, CSRE, CBNT, AMD Engineering Manager, CBC–Chicago

Wheatnet Conversion/Studio Rebuild the final room. All of us acknowledged that the Over the past few months and the project was hard work but a lot of fun just the same. subsequent articles in The Local Oscillator, I have We’re a bit sad to see it coming to a close. been reporting on the big project of the Of course, these projects are year for us in the Crawford never really done. The needs of the Broadcasting Chicago cluster, the station’s change along with personnel, conversion of the four control rooms to so the beauty of the Wheatnet system the Wheatnet AOIP “blade” system. is that has great flexibility and can be Additionally, we are reconfigured rather easily to the needs replacing the old studio cabinetry. So, of the format or individual programs. the rooms are essentially getting a So far, the staff has been very makeover. At the time of this writing pleased with the new rooms. There we are in the finishing touches on the have been some minor complaints fourth and final room. about the sound of mics as we are While the rooms are nearly going from using the Wheatstone M2 finished, we will still need to do a lot mic processors to the Wheatnet M4 of cleanup in the rack room where the mic blades. I do think it will just be a Wheatstone TDM router system will matter of finding the right adjustments be decommissioned and the mess of to match the sound the staff was used cables and punch blocks removed. to with the M2 processors. While the tangled mess will be a challenge, the Other than that, there has been very little in blessing of getting that mess out of there will be a the way of problems or issues. We are very pleased relief. with the sound and flexibility of the new control Still the project that was greatly anticipated surfaces and the Wheatnet Blade system. We are and so much work will be missed once it is done. I equally enthused by the look of the new furniture. was talking with the engineers as we were working in

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

Valley News By Steve Minshall Chief Engineer, KCBC -- Modesto

It has been another interesting month. The I must stop and say there that I really fires here in California have been intense to say the appreciate the no-nonsense approach to getting a new least. On a number of mornings I have woken up to machine online rather than mess at all with the old observe ash falling from the one. sky. On a couple of days, I When the new could not even find the sun computer arrived, I set to in the sky. One day I spent work to get the Wheatnet about five minutes outdoors, driver installed. This is came inside and had to where things did not go so change my shirt because I well. A number of reeked of smoke. If COVID acronyms come to mind, but was supposed to keep us at while accurately descriptive home, the smoke kept us of the situation, they would indoors. It was a real not be appropriate to print “Shelter-in Place” situation, herein. I spent many (many) but they couldn’t use that hours trying to get the driver term since the authorities had already used it to work but with no success. When Monday rolled inappropriately ad nauseam for the COVID crisis. around, the phone calls and emails began. The COVID situation continues to get more The main problem seemed to stem from a ridiculous as the days, weeks, and months go on. My Windows patch that needed to be removed. I wife and I celebrated our 42nd anniversary by driving received a lot of help from Stephen Poole and Todd to another county for dinner. While our county is on Dixon. Thanks, guys. Your hours of work are lockdown, an adjacent county, in the mountains, is appreciated! Finally, the machine seemed stable, but running pretty much wide open… just like the good only from a restart, not from a power-cycle or old days (them mountain people don’t take real shutdown. That seemed to be consistent and stable, kindly to having the government folk tell them how and I can live with that. The machine is on a full- to run their lives). time UPS, so it should never have an unintended This week is a turning point for some of the shutdown. churches. They have tried to follow the mandates, We finally put the new machine on the air. but after having been essentially closed for six It should have taken a few hours to get it ready, but months, and with the governor’s new color-coded set instead it turned out to be a couple of weeks. of restrictions placed on counties, they have had Fortunately, our old machine kept on playing. This enough. With restrictions on churches reaching the machine is the ON-AIR/DRR/DBServer, so it would ludicrous level, they are beginning to revolt and are be quite the calamity if it were to auger in. Little did opening the doors. I known that I was not quite done. At the station, things have been happening, With the new machine chugging away just too. One night we went off-air due to our Nexgen fine, I went home. A few minutes after I fell asleep, audio server having a bad hair day (night). It was all my off-air alarm woke me up. I had visions of the locked up and would not respond to anything, so it new machine dead in the water. It tuned out that we got a pull-the-power restart. It was not happy, and it never tested the DRR function. The DRR was all set let us know about it by taking 30 minutes to boot up. up fine, but no audio was getting into the machine. We finally restored it to operation. The answer was simple, it was just a matter of going We called RCS on a subsequent day for a into the sound settings and turning on the check on it. The verdict came down as a corrupted “microphone.” operating system (yikes!). The machine was seven September has had some other fun stuff at years old (that is like 14 in dog years). Cris the station, but I will hold those for next month’s immediately ordered us a new machine. edition. 11

The Local Oscillator October 2020

The Portland Report by John White, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC–Portland

In past columns, I have often taking a theme Multnomah County DA announced that arrested from a rock-n-roll (top 40) song of the time. But then rioters would not be charged. Not unreasonably, in a I guess I date myself. hail of flaming objects and the need to protect This month had so much officers, the OSP said they were happening that I had difficulty outta here. selecting a set of topics to discuss Fire - cross fade to new that could be limited to available scene. space plus a few extra added At Mt. Scott, KKPZ is paragraphs granted by our operating with generator power. newsletter editor. The station transferred to Arthur Brown debuts generator power with no lost the theme for this column with airtime. Resetting a few items his signature song, Fire. The like clocks were required, and the significance will become clear in cable internet was down for a moment. several days. Power management Roll back a few weeks to the Labor Day and monitoring station operation were the holiday. The waning hours of the holiday brought watchwords after Monday. Monday evening and winds peaking overnight Monday. Early on, Mt. Tuesday morning saw the expansion of several Scott lost commercial power with the station existing and new fires south and east of Portland in continuing to operate on backup generator. Multnomah and Clackamas Counties. Fire - cross fade to new scene. Fire - cross fade to new scene. Last August, I described violent rioting here President Trump offered to deputize OSP in the Portland area. An experience in alternate officers and Governor Brown accepted the offer. The journalism is the best way to describe the national OSP dispatched officers to Portland, supporting media coverage of Portland. Mostly peaceful. Well Portland Police, particularly at the Portland federal if the reporting is from where the riot isn’t, then of courthouse. Portland Mayor Wheeler ordered that course it’s peaceful. tear gas and other riot control techniques would not Here in Portland, that media video must be used. OSP was outta here. Requests by have been of the city of Portland in the State of Portland’s mayor for assistance from the Clackamas Jefferson. In my Portland, as the night goes on, and Washington County Sheriffs was answered by, peaceful demonstrators withdraw as rioters carry on. “Uh – no thanks.” About the recent developments on the riot Fire - cross fade to new scene. front… (it will all tie together, I promise). Our Fires in Clackamas and Multnomah mayor hasn’t been aggressive; actually, passive might Counties were growing. After two days, cable be a better word. To be honest, periodic riots and internet returned after a power loss issue was violent protests have been an ongoing experience in resolved. Other wireless internet services in the Mt. Portland over the last 20 years. Scott area were also up and down for several days. Most recently, an ongoing nightly sage at Many areas in Multnomah and Clackamas Counties the federal courthouse, north police precinct, east became yellow zones (prepare to evacuate) and red precinct, county headquarters, and other buildings zones; Mt. Scott and the Sunnyside areas remained has gained national visibility. green. Criticism from President Trump was At Mt. Scott, we have keep the field around countered by our governor’s offer to bring in the the building and towers in grass and clear of brush. Oregon State Police (OSP) to protect the federal Our facility is very fire defensible. courthouse, allowing the Federal Protective Services As the fires grew, the yellow zones became (FPS) to withdraw. RED, get out NOW zones. A fellow Portland Although substituting OSP officers for FPS broadcast engineer, Michael Everhart, also a officers failed to deescalate the nightly mayhem, the volunteer firefighter, was active fighting fires in 12

The Local Oscillator October 2020

Mollala to the east and south of KKPZ. Almost as grew worse with the pollution level topping out at challenging as the fires, smoke became a major above the maximum of 500. The Smoke-O-Meter disaster component. was even worse. Like many engineers, I started my career Fire - cross fade to new scene. working behind the transmitter as a small station Smoke drove the rioters, ‒ sorry, protesters engineer. In those days in ‒ off the streets. those days, engineers were Clackamas County often called from behind the and Portland finally receive transmitter to serve behind smoke relief as winds the microphone. As a brat changed and rain arrived in engineer, I was attracted to the area. top 30 rock-n-roll stations. Rioters and bricks, Many of those stones, industrial lasers, stations had Gates “Yard” gasoline, and firework consoles. Behind the mic, I mortars and flaming objects noticed that most popular returned. position for the pots was at The last weekend in full VU meter pegged. You September, Governor Brown could hear the meter banging into the stop as the jock stepped in and took command of the Portland Police was talking. I’m not sure why, but it did seem to go Department for the weekend. with top 40 radio. I don’t know about you, but I am so done At Mt. Scott, most of the emergency issues with 2020. Were only 505 years from Zager and were resolved. The fuel tank was topped off and the Evans’ In The Year 2525. Oh goodie. station began to return to normal. Smoke already bad

Rocky Mountain Ramblings The Denver Report by Amanda Hopp, CBRE Chief Engineer, CBC - Denver

Microwave Replacement To say it was a long day would be an And I don’t mean for food. September understatement. I understand safety and wanting to began the project of replacing the three Trango links do things right, but the tower climber moved much in Denver that date back to 2010. slower than I would like to see. I Of course, these things never think part of it is the tower he seem to go without issue. When had to climb is not all that the tower crew arrived to work friendly for climbers, and it is on the first link, we wanted to nearly 500 feet tall. From the make sure the adapters we had time we arrived on site, it took fit. Better to deal with it on the him over two hours just to get on ground, make sure it all works, the tower. than 400 feet up in the air on the Once at the top, the side of a tower. work seemed to take forever. This is where the first The crew got everything aimed issue happened. The studio end and ready to go, and he was off was fine, but we found we did the tower close to dark. Once not have the correct adapter for the 4-foot dish that clear of the tower, we put full power back on and was to go on the KLZ tower. We got things ordered immediately the link died. We fought with this for a and shipped over night and shortly after the new bit before realizing the issue was RFI. adapters arrived, we got it installed and were ready to Rather than make him climb in the dark we begin the first link, KLZ. waited. We called Derek of Today Works to come out. He is an experienced climber and someone who 13

The Local Oscillator October 2020 can troubleshoot for us. After trying several things, equipment and cabling has taken its toll. It is a he noticed that when RF was on, the power supply to complete nightmare trying to do any work in the the radio would quit working. rack. The equipment is also in an order that just We had him climb again to replace that doesn’t work for us. power supply with a much better one. So far, so Our plan is to take the station down, remove good as we have not had any further issues with RFI. the equipment and rearrange it so it makes sense… so Based on what we learned, we converted the the remote control isn’t down near the floor and the old Trango 48-volt power supplies to be able to be UPS isn’t mid-rack. I have a drawing of where used with the new Cambium radios. We still have everything will go to help make some things easier one link to finish up, but the two we have done seem for us. to be working well. We did have one issue the other We will then redo the cabling, or should I day where the audio on KLTT was garbled. It say re-route the cabling in a way that makes sense. I sounded horrible. There were tons of dropped plan on making it as neat as possible. We all know packets on the radio. A reboot of both ends fixed the trying to keep a bunch of cabling cleaned up is issue. We will monitor these links closely to be sure exceedingly difficult. this is not going to become an issue. I am praying it One thing I did do, to help with this project, was just a one and done issue. is install two high density power strips. The rack had some outlets on one side, and it was full up. These Transmitter Internet two new high-density power strips will allow us to Last year we had internet service installed at use the rack properly and have even the power KLDC, KLZ and KLVZ. We were able to then looking neat. The power strips are 100% UPS power, install Barix units for backup audio. This has been a by the way, so everything in the rack will be blessing. When we lose the main link, which does protected from brown-outs and momentary outages. not happen too often, the Omnia.9 does its job and While waiting on the tower crew to finish up switches over to the Barix analog feed. with the antenna replacement, I found myself trying One thing I did notice was that the port to get things looking good at the site. This year, the forwarding we set up within the CenturyLink birds have made a mess of everything. The front modems was not consistent. I, of course, always door, back door, the concrete, the gates all have bird found this out at an inopportune time. I would have poop all over. It is disgusting. I found a 20-V Worx to go into the modem and Barix unit and switch the brand power cleaner (https://www.worx.com) . You port being used. We finally went to Micro Center can fill a bucket with water and put the hose that is and purchased some NetGear wireless routers. We attached to the wand in and go to town. It isn’t were able to get the PPPoE login info for each perfect, but it did get our back gate cleaned up where account and the setup of these units was easy. I have you can open it without having to put your hand in had them in place for several weeks now and so far, poop. so good. I need to find a bigger water container we With all this, I wanted to find a way to get can use for this, since it does use quite a bit of water. internet at the KLTT site. It was the one site we still I hope to be able to use it to not only begin cleaning use ISDN at, the one site that does not have Xfinity up the bird poop but also in the future when we need or CenturyLink. I googled broadband internet in to do maintenance on our AC units and do other Brighton, CO and found Rise Broadband. It is my cleaning around the sites. understanding that we use them in other markets. With secondary internet service now at this site, I Fires went ahead and installed the wireless router and have It seems the West Coast is on fire. Fires in begun the process of getting things set up for the California, Oregon, and Colorado that I know of are Barix. We still have some work to do to get this bringing in a ton of smoke. I ask for prayers for one going, but pretty soon, all four stations will have particular fire in Colorado, the Cameron Peak Fire. automatic backup audio, which will be a huge help in My husband’s family has a cabin they have been the future. going to for over 30 years up in northern Colorado. It is where my husband proposed to me and it holds Future KLTT Projects many memories for the entire family. The Cameron Some Saturday in October, my dad and I Peak Fire is just across the two-lane highway from will get to spend a few hours at the KLTT site Red Feather, where this cabin is. Fire crews are rearranging the equipment rack. 25 years of doing everything they can to help save this small 14

The Local Oscillator October 2020 town, but we aren’t sure if they can save the cabin. are fires in that area, too, so we’ll have to wait on With temperatures beginning to warm up, the wind that. will no doubt pick up again and start driving this fire It is time to start getting some other close and closer. The fire has burned over 124,000 maintenance items done, cutting trees down, acres, making it the third largest in state history. We replacing HID lights, site cleanup and so much more. pray the fire crews remain safe, that they can get the I look forward to making time to get this work done upper hand on this fire and are able to protect the and getting long overdue projects done to help better various homes and other places that are being our sites. affected. We also pray that the cabin is spared and The most exciting thing for us is our that no damage from the fire or from the freezing Wheatstone upgrade project. The order has been nights will occur as the cabin was not able to be placed. It will be a bit bittersweet as in 2005, when winterized before the mandatory evacuations we installed the G6 consoles in the control rooms, it occurred. was my first big project in engineering. It was a fun time. Now I get to remove that old equipment and Upcoming install the new stuff. I look forward to getting rid of We still have one final microwave link to all the old cabling. It will clean up the racks so finish up. This one should be the easiest one as it is much. I love this new technology where all you need the shortest tower and a smaller antenna – but it’s the is some CAT6 to make this stuff work. I now wait longest path. Both other installs went late into the for word when everything will be shipped. Until evening, and it would be great if somehow, this one then, I get to plan out how we will do everything. didn’t take nearly as long as the other two. Moving from the bridge system over to this new I also need to make a trip to Wyoming with system will be time consuming as we will need to my dad to do some field intensity measurements for carefully plan on where to put everything (which the possible KLDC move over to the KLZ site. We blades to use for what). have had to put it off for over a month and need to That about covers it for this edition. I pray get moving on it as any type of move of a station you all stay safe and well. takes time, and we don’t want to run out. But there

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The Local Oscillator October 2020

KBRT • Costa Mesa - Los Angeles, CA WCHB • Royal Oak - Detroit, MI 740 kHz/100.7 MHz, 50 kW-D/0.2 kW-N, DA-1 1340 kHz/96.7 MHz, 1 kW-U, DA-D KNSN • San Diego, CA WRDT • Monroe - Detroit, MI 1240 kHz/103.3 MHz, 550W-U 560 kHz/107.1 MHz, 500 W-D/14 W-N, DA-D KCBC • Manteca - San Francisco, CA WMUZ-FM • Detroit, MI 770 kHz/94.7 MHz, 50 kW-D/4.3 kW-N, DA-2 103.5 MHz, 50 kW/150m AAT KKPZ • Portland, OR WMUZ • Taylor - Detroit, MI 1330 kHz/97.5 MHz, 5 kW-U, DA-1 1200 kHz, 50 kW-D/15 kW-N, DA-2 KLZ • Denver, CO WPWX • Hammond - Chicago, IL 560 kHz/100.3 MHz, 5 kW-U, DA-1 92.3 MHz, 50 kW/150m AAT KLDC • Brighton - Denver, CO WSRB • Lansing - Chicago, IL 1220 kHz, 660 W-D/11 W-N, ND 106.3 MHz, 4.1 kW/120m AAT KLTT • Commerce City - Denver, CO WYRB • Genoa - Rockford, IL 670 kHz/95.1 MHz, 50 kW-D/1.4 kW-N, DA-2 106.3 MHz, 3.8 kW/126m AAT KLVZ • Denver, CO WYCA • Crete - Chicago, IL 810 kHz/94.3 MHz/95.3 MHz, 2.2 kW-D/430 W-N, DA-2 102.3 MHz, 1.05 kW/150m AAT WDCX • Rochester, NY WYDE • Birmingham, AL 990 kHz/107.1 MHz, 5 kW-D/2.5 kW-N, DA-2 1260 kHz/95.3 MHz, 5 kW-D/41W-N, ND WDCX-FM • Buffalo, NY WYDE-FM • Cullman - Birmingham, AL 99.5 MHz, 110 kW/195m AAT 101.1 MHz, 100 kW/410m AAT WDCZ • Buffalo, NY WXJC • Birmingham, AL 950 kHz/94.1 MHz, 5 kW-U, DA-1 850 kHz/96.9 MHz, 50 kW-D/1 kW-N, DA-2 WDJC-FM • Birmingham, AL WXJC-FM • Cordova-Birmingham, AL 93.7 MHz, 100 kW/307m AAT 92.5 MHz, 2.2 kW/167m AAT

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